Page 39 of Single Dad’s Fake Bride (Billionaire Baby Daddies #7)

SADIE

T he conference room was crammed with paralegals, recorders, and enough cold water bottles to supply a small army. I sat across from Margot's attorney, a sharp-faced man with silver hair who looked at me as if I were a specimen under glass.

My hands were folded in my lap, fingers interlaced to keep them from shaking. The morning sickness had been relentless for days, and the dry toast I'd forced down this morning felt precarious in my stomach.

The questions started immediately. My finances before the marriage.

My mother's alcoholism. My job loss at Hawthorne.

Each answer felt pulled from my chest, exposing parts of my life I'd never wanted strangers to examine.

Harrison's hand on my back steadied me through it, but I was upset that his sisters were doing this to us.

"Us…" The word itself steadied me now, no longer two individuals with an agreement, but a couple, one very much in love.

The attorney leaned forward, his voice cutting. "So you were struggling financially when Mr. Vale proposed?"

"Yes." The word came out small but not without heart. I doubted any average woman in the city in my position would've been more well-off. Harrison was steady on his own before he met me, but not rich. They acted like I was a gold digger.

My heart hammered as he pressed deeper. Had Harrison offered financial incentives? Did I know about the inheritance? Wasn't this marriage the most financially advantageous thing that had ever happened to me?

Each question felt like a scalpel, dissecting my motivations, my history, my worth as a person. Heat crawled up my neck as he painted a picture of a desperate woman who'd latched onto a desperate man.

"I married Harrison because his daughter needed stability," I said, my voice stronger now. "And because I cared about both of them."

"You cared about a man you'd known for how long?"

"Several weeks when we married. But I'd known Eloise for months."

The attorney's eyes sharpened. "Your position at Hawthorne. The position you lost. And yet here you are, married to that same headmaster."

My stomach rolled violently. The room tilted, and sweat broke out across my forehead. I pressed my lips together, fighting the nausea that was climbing my throat.

"Isn't it convenient that your relationship began precisely when he needed a wife, precisely when you needed financial rescue?"

The words hit me while my body was already betraying me.

Convenient. As if loving Harrison was calculated.

As if Eloise's trust was a transaction. As if the nights I'd held my mother's hair while she was sick were just stepping stones to this moment.

It didn't matter to me how we met or how we found our way here.

What mattered was that we loved each other. This was real.

My mouth filled with saliva. The room tilted dangerously, and panic flooded my chest—not from the nausea, but from the humiliation of what was about to happen.

I lurched from the table, my chair scraping loudly. Every eye in the room followed me as I stumbled toward the trash can, my pride crumbling with each desperate step.

The retching was violent and loud in the silent room. My hair fell forward as I gripped the rim, my body choosing the worst possible moment to fall apart. All those carefully constructed answers, all my attempts to appear composed and credible—destroyed in seconds.

"Sadie." Harrison was there instantly, talking softly to me as I threw up.

His hands gathered my hair gently, his palm steady against my back as I heaved again.

The tenderness in his touch made my chest ache even as my stomach rebelled.

This was him—the man who held me through morning sickness, who brought me crackers at three a.m., who never made me feel fragile even when I was falling apart.

"Here." Tissues appeared in my shaking hands. "Water?"

I nodded, not trusting my voice. His solid, protective arm circled me as he guided me back to the chair while I sipped water and tried to disappear.

"Oh, for heaven's sake." Margot's voice sliced through the quiet, dripping with revulsion. "This is completely inappropriate."

Her hateful tone made me cringe. As if being pregnant was a performance. As if my body's rebellion was a calculated move. I couldn’t believe Harrison had come from the same womb as that woman.

Harrison's voice was deadly quiet. "She's pregnant, you heartless?—"

"Harrison." Caroline sounded equally disgusted as she stopped him from insulting Margot.

"This is clearly a performance," Margot said until Harrison had enough.

"Enough." The word cracked through the room. Harrison turned toward his sisters, and I felt the fury radiating from him. "Both of you need to get in line or stay out of this room. She's my wife, and she's carrying my child, and if you can't show basic human decency, then leave."

My chest constricted. Wife . Child . The words he'd never said with such fierce protectiveness before.

Even through my humiliation, warmth spread through me at the absolute certainty in his voice.

It brought tears to my eyes, and I leaned into the crook of his arm to rest my head on his shoulder.

This was where I belonged. I knew it in my heart that no matter what happened, I was home here in Harrison's arms.

The judge cleared his throat. "Mrs. Vale, are you feeling well enough to continue?"

I looked up at him, mortified beyond words. "I'm so sorry, Your Honor. The morning sickness has made me quite ill lately. Could we possibly have a brief recess?"

"Granted."

As people filed out, the judge approached our table. He waited until both of Harrison's sisters were out the door before he asked, "How far along are you?"

"I, uh…" I glanced at Harrison. I honestly had no clue, but it couldn’t be more than six or seven weeks.

"We haven't been to the obstetrician yet," Harrison said, but he was looking at me, doting on me.

"Did you plan this, or is it a surprise?" the judge asked, and I looked up to see a sparkle in his eye. He wasn't grilling us. He was taking interest.

My hand rested on my still-queasy stomach as I said, "Not really…" I chuckled a little and sighed. "It just sort of happened."

"But we couldn't be happier," Harrison added, still staring at me with wonder in his eyes.

"Mrs. Vale, in your opinion, is your marriage to Harrison Vale genuine?"

The question should have been easy. But sitting there, humiliated and sick, with the taste of bile still in my mouth and his sisters' disgust echoing in my ears, I felt overwhelmed.

The quiet mornings when he brought me tea. The way he'd learned to braid Eloise's hair when I was too nauseous to move. How he'd held me the night my mother cried about being a burden. The way he looked at me now, not with pity but with absolute conviction that I belonged here.

"Yes," I said, and my voice didn't quaver. "Completely genuine." And when I looked at Harrison, I could see his eyes brimming with emotion.

"Thank you," the judge said, and he gathered his papers and left the room. It grew very quiet then, with just the two of us.

Harrison knelt beside my chair, his hand covering mine. "How are you feeling?"

"Awful." I closed my eyes, leaning back in the chair. "I think I just ruined everything."

"You didn't ruin anything."

"I threw up in front of the judge, Harrison. In the middle of being questioned about whether our marriage is fake." Tears stung my eyes. "They're going to think it was all nerves and that I’m faking it."

"They're going to think you're pregnant and sick, which is exactly what you are."

I shook my head. "I should have held it together."

"You are strong." His thumb brushed across my knuckles. "You answered every question honestly and calmly, even when they were trying to tear you apart."

"And then I fell apart anyway."

"You got morning sickness. There's a difference."

I opened my eyes and looked at him. His jaw was tight with anger, but his eyes were gentle when they met mine. "Do you think he believed me? When I said the marriage was genuine?"

"I think he saw a woman who's exhausted and pregnant and being attacked by lawyers, and who still managed to tell the truth."

"But what if?—"

"No what-ifs." He squeezed my hand. "We've done everything we can. The rest is up to the judge."

I nodded, but the fear in my chest didn't ease. As we sat in the empty conference room, waiting for the deposition to resume, I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd just handed his sisters exactly what they needed to destroy us.